From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30960 invoked from network); 1 Nov 2004 12:32:15 +0000 Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (156.56.111.197) by lists.gentoo.org with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 1 Nov 2004 12:32:15 +0000 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([156.56.111.196] helo=parrot.gentoo.org) by smtp.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.41) id 1CObM7-0008Pz-7Z for arch-gentoo-gwn@lists.gentoo.org; Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:32:15 +0000 Received: (qmail 31199 invoked by uid 89); 1 Nov 2004 12:30:18 +0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-gwn-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-gwn@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 15349 invoked from network); 1 Nov 2004 12:27:47 +0000 Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:26:48 +0100 From: Ulrich Plate To: gentoo-gwn@lists.gentoo.org Message-Id: <20041101152648.72753e24.plate@gentoo.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.99-gtk2-20041024 (GTK+ 2.4.9; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS GOL X-Abuse-Complaints: abuse@gol.com Subject: [gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 1 November 2004 X-Archives-Salt: d11e76d5-640e-4dd3-8be9-420e6affb553 X-Archives-Hash: 4f2c6c1f8dbbee29bd335fe364b00ea4 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gentoo Weekly Newsletter http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 1 November 2004. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============== 1. Gentoo News ============== Report from last week's Linux World Expo in Germany (Frankfurt) --------------------------------------------------------------- The Linux World Conference & Expo[1] in Frankfurt is one of Germany's top 5 specialized fairs, with 15,000 visitors and its main focus on commercial Linux offerings. The exhibition serves as a platform for Linux products and development, and is complemented by a conference program spanning all three days. Gentoo was present in the ".org Pavilion" next to a lot of other non-commercial community projects. The German non-profit association "Förderverein Gentoo e.V."[2] had been in charge of organization, and brought together more than ten Gentoo developers from Germany, Austria and the Switzerland to man the booth. 1. http://www.linuxworldexpo.de 2. http://www.gentoo-ev.de Figure 1.1: The Usual suspects http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041101-lwe.jpg Note: Left to right: zypher (Marc Hildebrand), dj-submerge (Marc Herren), visiting GWN editor Ulrich Plate, swegener (Sven Wegener), crouching ian! (Christian Hartmann), PyLon (Lars Weiler), yah (Markus van Bracht), cybersystem (Markus Nigbur), amne (Wernfried Haas), stkn (Stefan Knoblich) and tantive (Michael Imhof) There was quite some interest in the large variety of supported platforms displayed at the Gentoo booth this year, from various x86 and PPC laptops to three Ultra-Sparc machines, and even a Siemens Primergy quadruple Xeon server. With half a dozen hosts constantly building base systems or emerging applications, a dedicated Mini-ITX based distfiles server was put in place as a local repository right at the booth, very convenient for both staff and Gentoo users passing by. Several visitors came to get special support for their Gentoo installations, or just wanted to meet some of the developers involved in the project. One of their most frequent request was a "server edition" or "Enterprise Gentoo", with a more stabilized tree and more comfort for updates in a production environment - hardly surprising, since the LWE is a predominantly commercial trade fair. Special LWE edition Gentoo x86 LiveCDs (nicknamed "Fizzlewizzle") featuring German localizations of KDE, extensive documentation and a nightview of Frankfurt's office district on the CD label were distributed at the booth. Both the ISO image (remastered by Tobias Scherbaum[3]) and Christian Hartmann's[4] artwork to print directly onto the media can be downloaded from here[5]. 3. dertobi123@gentoo.org 4. ian@gentoo.org 5. http://download.iansview.com/gentoo/exhibitions/lwe-frankfurt/2004/livecd/ Figure 1.2: Gentoo LiveCD LWE edition cover http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20041101-livecd.jpg Mixed messages were heard from neighboring exhibitors: While Sven Herzberg of the Gnome[6] booth was kind enough to point out that Gentoo's bugzilla (unlike his own project's older version) provides buglists in iCalendar format for import into Evolution, Sun Microsystems had disappointing news about the future availability of Java on the PowerPC platform - none planned, unfortunately. Their project Looking Glass[7] remains quite an eyecatcher, though. 6. http://www.gnome.org 7. http://www.sun.com/software/project-looking-glass Call for help: Experienced J2EE developers needed ------------------------------------------------- Karl Trygve Kalleberg[8] of Gentoo's Java team really needs help: "Judging from the number of bugs and requests for feature enhancements that we've been assigned in the recent past, there must have been increased interest in Java applications since the release of Eclipse[9]," explains Karl. The first request for additional help went out in August, but this time there's a tad more urgency to it: If you're an experienced Java developer, especially with a J2EE track record, please mail Karl[10] and the Gentoo recruiters team[11] today. 8. karltk@gentoo.org 9. http://www.eclipse.org 10. karltk@gentoo.org 11. recruiters@gentoo.org Coming up: Gentoo Bugday on Saturday, 6 November 2004 ----------------------------------------------------- Gentoo Bugday is a monthly event where users and developers gather on IRC to fix lots of bugs. This unique opportunity to meet the devs and directly participate in fixing problems has been hugely successful, in the past. A dedicated IRC channel has been set aside for this collaborative effort, #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.org, and if you want to participate, all you have to do is /join the channel. ================== 2. Gentoo security ================== MySQL: Multiple vulnerabilities ------------------------------- Several vulnerabilities including privilege abuse, Denial of Service, and potentially remote arbitrary code execution have been discovered in MySQL. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[12] 12. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-22.xml Gaim: Multiple vulnerabilities ------------------------------ Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in Gaim which could allow a remote attacker to crash the application, or possibly execute arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[13] 13. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-23.xml MIT krb5: Insecure temporary file use in send-pr.sh --------------------------------------------------- The send-pr.sh script, included in the mit-krb5 package, is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files with the rights of the user running the utility. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[14] 14. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-24.xml Netatalk: Insecure tempfile handling in etc2ps.sh ------------------------------------------------- The etc2ps.sh script, included in the Netatalk package, is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files with the rights of the user running the utility. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[15] 15. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-25.xml socat: Format string vulnerability ---------------------------------- socat contains a format string vulnerability that can potentially lead to remote or local execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the socat process. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[16] 16. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-26.xml mpg123: Buffer overflow vulnerabilities --------------------------------------- Buffer overflow vulnerabilities have been found in mpg123 which could lead to execution of arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[17] 17. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-27.xml rssh: Format string vulnerability --------------------------------- rssh is vulnerable to a format string vulnerability that allows arbitrary execution of code with the rights of the connected user, thereby bypassing rssh restrictions. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[18] 18. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-28.xml PuTTY: Pre-authentication buffer overflow ----------------------------------------- PuTTY contains a vulnerability allowing an SSH server to execute arbitrary code on the connecting client. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[19] 19. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-29.xml GPdf, KPDF, KOffice: Vulnerabilities in included xpdf ----------------------------------------------------- GPdf, KPDF and KOffice all include vulnerable xpdf code to handle PDF files, making them vulnerable to execution of arbitrary code upon viewing a malicious PDF file. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[20] 20. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-30.xml Archive::Zip: Virus detection evasion ------------------------------------- Email virus scanning software relying on Archive::Zip can be fooled into thinking a ZIP attachment is empty while it contains a virus, allowing detection evasion. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[21] 21. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200410-31.xml ========================= 3. Heard in the community ========================= Web forums ---------- To sleep - perchance to dream: ay, there's the patch Ending many months of insomnia in PowerBooks, Gentoo/PPC developer JoseJX reported in a Forum thread on Wednesday that Benjamin Herrenschmidt, the PPC kernel maintainer, has published his latest enhancement to the power management of portable Macs, more specifically for putting the aluminium PowerBooks with ATi graphics chipsets to sleep. Benh's patch seems to apply cleanly to Gentoo's development sources 2.6.9-r1, and a wave of gratitude is washing over the PPC forum: * Test patch for sleep on AluBooks[22] 22. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=243169 gentoo-user ----------- Analogue distributions Users commented on a new linux distribution vidalinux[23] which is based on Gentoo. It uses the Gentoo system tools and portage as its package manager. 23. http://www.vidalinux.com * vidalinux[24] 24. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/105000 Master USE Several discussions arose this week regarding USE flags in Portage. USE flags provide a convenient approach to managing support and dependency information when emerging packages. Understanding what flags are necessary and how they might impact a system's configuration can be challenging for new users. * USE flags documentation[25] * Choosing USE flags (and choosing well)[26] * changed USE flags[27] 25. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/105145 26. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/105001 27. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/104703 Binary pop One user noticed that etc-update was asking them to overwrite /etc/X11/xdm binary files in addition to just configuration files. * Portage: binaries seen as config files[28] 28. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/105121 gentoo-dev ---------- A few glibc changes Travis Tilley[29] has again done some (major) changes to Gentoo's glibc. This includes enabling some sanity checks, and improved DNS and mDNS handling. 29. lv@gentoo.org * A few glibc changes[30] 30. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/22501 "Planet Gentoo" blog aggregator Daniel Drake[31] presents a proposal for a Gentoo Blog Aggregator to provide users and developers with a better overview of developments in Gentoo. The ensuing discussion centered more on the usefulness of such a service, as many people dislike blogs. 31. dsd@gentoo.org * GLEP 30: "Planet Gentoo" web log aggregator[32] 32. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/22415 GLEP 29: USE flag grouping In another GLEP started this week, Ciaran McCreesh[33] proposes some new input on USE flag groups. This should enable users to select groups (for example, @KDE, @MULTIMEDIA), but the fine details (what does @KDE -@GNOME do?) are still not perfectly worked out. 33. ciaranm@gentoo.org * A GLEP 29: USE flag grouping[34] 34. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/22378 ====================== 4. Gentoo in the press ====================== Newsforge (30 October 2004) --------------------------- Joe Barr has written a tongue-in-cheek piece[35] answering the question what the choice of Linux distributions says about a person. According to Barr, Gentoo's motto is "If it moves, compile it," supposedly making it the distribution most appealing to lone ranger types like John Wayne. 35. http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/10/30/1322227 =========== 5. Bugzilla =========== Summary ------- * Statistics * Closed bug ranking * New bug rankings Statistics ---------- The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[36]) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 24 October 2004 and 30 October 2004, activity on the site has resulted in: 36. http://bugs.gentoo.org * 802 new bugs during this period * 378 bugs closed or resolved during this period * 19 previously closed bugs were reopened this period Of the 7368 currently open bugs: 115 are labeled 'blocker', 255 are labeled 'critical', and 551 are labeled 'major'. Closed bug rankings ------------------- The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are: * Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[37], with 45 closed bugs[38] * AMD64 Porting Team[39], with 25 closed bugs[40] * Gentoo Security[41], with 19 closed bugs[42] * Java team[43], with 14 closed bugs[44] * netmon herd[45], with 13 closed bugs[46] * Gentoo KDE team[47], with 12 closed bugs[48] * Wine Maintainers[49], with 10 closed bugs[50] * Gentoo Toolchain Maintainers[51], with 10 closed bugs[52] 37. base-system@gentoo.org 38. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org 39. amd64@gentoo.org 40. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org 41. security@gentoo.org 42. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org 43. java@gentoo.org 44. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org 45. netmon@gentoo.org 46. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=netmon@gentoo.org 47. kde@gentoo.org 48. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org 49. wine@gentoo.org 50. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=wine@gentoo.org 51. toolchain@gentoo.org 52. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=toolchain@gentoo.org New bug rankings ---------------- The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are: * Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[53], with 19 new bugs[54] * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[55], with 17 new bugs[56] * AMD64 Porting Team[57], with 17 new bugs[58] * Alpha Porters[59], with 15 new bugs[60] * Gentoo Games[61], with 12 new bugs[62] * Dylan Carlson[63], with 12 new bugs[64] * Portage team[65], with 11 new bugs[66] * Mozilla Gentoo Team[67], with 10 new bugs[68] 53. base-system@gentoo.org 54. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org 55. gnome@gentoo.org 56. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org 57. amd64@gentoo.org 58. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org 59. alpha@gentoo.org 60. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=alpha@gentoo.org 61. games@gentoo.org 62. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org 63. absinthe@gentoo.org 64. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=absinthe@gentoo.org 65. dev-portage@gentoo.org 66. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=dev-portage@gentoo.org 67. mozilla@gentoo.org 68. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2004-10-24&chfieldto=2004-10-30&assigned_to=mozilla@gentoo.org ================== 6. Tips and Tricks ================== nice and PORTAGE_NICENESS ------------------------- Last week's GWN introduced brandnew Portage features, this week we'd like to take you back to a venerable, sturdy old feature that's hot nonetheless: PORTAGE_NICENESS. Let's look at some basics first. Very simply put, the Linux kernel has a (process) scheduler that selects which process to run next in your system. One factor influencing the scheduler's decision about which process to assign CPU time to, is the priority of a process. Processes with a high priority will run before those with a lower priority, and processes with the same priority will take turns in running, one after the other and over again. Better have a look at it for yourself: Run top from a terminal on your host and pay special attention to the PR and NI columns: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Code Listing 6.1: | |Sample top | output--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- | | | PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND | | 8005 root 20 0 85188 33m 57m R 3.3 6.7 8:43.77 X | | 8148 tobias 20 10 25624 2376 24m S 0.3 0.5 0:00.60 xscreensaver| | 1 root 20 0 2476 552 2304 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.31 init | | 2 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 | | 3 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.09 events/0 | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The PR column indicates the priority level of a process, the value in the NI column displays the so-called nice value of process, which allows you to adjust the priority of a running process. Possible values range from -20 (very high priority), via 0 (standard priority) to 20 (very low priority). In our little example the xscreensaver process has a higher nice value than X, which indicates that X has a higher priority than xscreensaver. Now, how do we make this work to our advantage when using Portage? If you keep using your computer while compiling packages you will notice that your box is much less responsive as usal. This is caused by having two "groups" of processes with the same nice priority: your usual running tasks on one side, and emerge (and its child processes) on the other. Now, if you could renice emerge and its children to a higher nice (i.e. lower priority!) value, compiling would inevitably take somewhat longer, but you could use your workstation without noticing much difference to its usual performance. That's what the PORTAGE_NICENESS parameter in /etc/make.conf is for: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Code Listing 6.2: | |Put this in | /etc/make.conf------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ | | |PORTAGE_NICENESS="15" | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can generally "renice" individual processes from the commandline, (e.g. renice 0 -p 8148 to prioritize xscreensaver in the above example), but this will not work with emerge, as Portage reads the PORTAGE_NICENESS setting from /etc/make.conf once and executes all child processes with the specified nice value. =========================== 7. Moves, adds, and changes =========================== Moves ----- The following developers recently left the Gentoo team: * None this week Adds ---- The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team: * None this week Changes ------- The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux project: * None this week ==================== 8. Contribute to GWN ==================== Interested in contributing to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter? Send us an email[69]. 69. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org =============== 9. GWN feedback =============== Please send us your feedback[70] and help make the GWN better. 70. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org ================================ 10. GWN subscription information ================================ To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to gentoo-gwn-subscribe@gentoo.org. To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to gentoo-gwn-unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the email address you are subscribed under. =================== 11. Other languages =================== The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages: * Danish[71] * Dutch[72] * English[73] * German[74] * French[75] * Japanese[76] * Italian[77] * Polish[78] * Portuguese (Brazil)[79] * Portuguese (Portugal)[80] * Russian[81] * Spanish[82] * Turkish[83] 71. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml 72. http://www.gentoo.org/news/be/gwn/gwn.xml 73. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml 74. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml 75. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml 76. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml 77. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml 78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml 79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/br/gwn/gwn.xml 80. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml 81. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml 82. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml 83. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml Ulrich Plate - Editor Brian Downey - Author Patrick Lauer - Author Tobias Scherbaum - Author Emmet Wagle - Author Lars Weiler - Author -- gentoo-gwn@gentoo.org mailing list